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What's Sr Gregor Eating Now? - Pork cutlets with jalapeno gravy

Cook it up in the kitchen, fry it up in a pan, Sr Gregor is pretty willing to try anything. Even gravy that has pickles in it.

This recipe comes to me courtesy of Chef John over at FoodWishes.com. It has a gravy that features jalapeņos, so what's not to try? Here's the basic ingredients I used this time around:

Cutlets:

Pork cutlets cut from a loin to about an inch or two thick, pounded flat.
Flour to dredge in.
Egg to bind with.
Italian bread crumbs.
Vegetable oil for the cooking.

Sauce:

A few spoonfuls of olive oil.
1/2 cup of diced pickles.
1/2 cup of seeded and diced jalapeņos.
Two tablespoons of butter (unsalted).
A few stalks of green onion, sliced thin.
Cup of chilled milk.
Teaspoon of salt

Other accoutrements:

Couple of good crusty rolls.
Spinach.
Tomatoes.

The clever bit to this is in the sauce. The pork cutlets are easy enough: pound flat, dredge, egg, bread, and fry in a pan. Set them aside in a warm oven (275 degrees), while you do the tricky bits. It's pretty much my standard, at this point.

The tricky bit here, imo, is the roux. A basic roux involves melting some butter, adding a touch of salt, slowly adding some flour so that it all melts together. For this variation, we're adding some diced pickles, some finely-chopped green onion, and some diced jalapeņos. I started with olive oil to get the veggies sizzling, then melted in the butter, and added the flour last. I wanted to make sure to work the whisk pretty rapidly to ensure I didn't end up with any big lumpy chunks of uncooked flour, but at the same time, I was going for a very light roux, so I didn't want it to cook for too long.

I kept wanting to put in more peppers, but since this was my first time, I wanted to stick close to the original recipe.

Once it comes to adding the milk, Chef John's note of adding it in cold seemed to do the trick. I wasn't too sure about the color, but if the Wikipedia picture is anything to judge by, I guess it came out pretty well.

You'll want to cook it for a couplefew more minutes of a low flame, to let it really thicken up. It's also a good time to remove your cutlets from the stove to let them rest.

Once it has a good consistency (how good? I dunno... gloopy?), you're ready to go. I served these on crusty rolls with some fresh veg... they just seemed to beg for being made into a sandwich.

On the end of it, I think the sauce could have used more heat - taste-wise, not flame-wise. The sauce came out sweeter than I was hoping. My original instinct to go with more peppers was pretty spot on - next time around I suspect I'll leave more of the seeds in. But overall, a fun and tasty dish!